


Shame

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6831025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lawrence walks in on Aaron and Robert about to have sex and both Lawrence and Robert deal with their discomfort in different ways. Robert attempts to shame Lawrence about his sexuality, but Lawrence's tactics cut Robert far deeper and memories of his father resurface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veryveryverytemporarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryveryverytemporarily/gifts).



> Inspired by @veryveryverytemporarily on tumblr!

His eyes had the grittiness of sand grains as the white glare from the spreadsheet drove right into his sockets. He’d get it done before the end of the day, no question, it just depended on how you were classifying the end of the day. Six? Definitely not. Make it ten. The portacabin door opened and with it the sound of aching metal and the gentle thud of two boots. He saw him, out of the corner of his eye, lift his arm and rub his eyes over with his sleeve, careful to avoid touching his face with the rough gloves he wore.

“I’m done here,” he said, propping himself up on the doorway. “Are you nearly finished?”

“I wish,” Robert said, folding back into his chair. It gave a little bounce as he did. He looked across at Aaron, the wind battered pink flush to his cheeks, the work-day softened hair. How he longed to go home with him.

“I guess I’ll see you in about a week, then,” Aaron said, moving in closer, lifting a pile of papers and then returning them, his frustration dampened by a smile edging onto his mouth.

Robert returned the smile and slanted his chair to the right. Where were the days he’d cancel and shift meetings just to spend fifteen minutes with his hands on Aaron’s waist, lips and tongue on his neck, mouth? How easy it was then, a multi-million pound business in his back pocket and a flawless reputation.

“You could stay and keep me company.”

Aaron scoffed. “Great,” he said. “Watch you write your emails and get all smarmy on the phone.”

“It’s not smarmy. It’s charming.”

“It’s not,” Aaron said. He leant against Robert’s desk, crossing his feet. “I’ll wait up for you if you wanna come over.”

“Thanks,” Robert said, giving the top of Aaron’s leg a squeeze. “But I’m not gonna be done here until…ten at the earliest.”

“Okay,” Aaron said, giving a resigned shrug and removing his gloves and placing them on the desk, avoiding the stack of paperwork.

Robert reached out, clawing Aaron towards him by his black hoodie. It came to a natural halt, with Aaron stood in front of him, legs touching his and then Aaron leaned in, hands braced on the back of Robert’s chair. It was one of those wheeled ones, but he’d wedged it against the desk.

“We haven’t done this in a long time,” Robert said, feeling the heat of Aaron’s breath on his lips. His hands rests on Aaron’s waist, resisting the urge to slide them to his backside and pull him onto his lap. He licked his own lips, shivery with anticipation. His insides always jellied when he saw Aaron at the scrapyard, tearing into a car or tense with concentration. This business was the seed of everything – of money, of sex, of them. And they’d done everything in these four walls. Well, almost. His fantasies had done the rest.

“Yeah,” Aaron said. His chest was rising and falling, his voice deliciously breathy. His gaze fell to Robert’s lips and he started to imagine how easy it would be for Aaron to get on his knees right there. “It’s been a while.”

“If Adam wasn’t always hanging around,” Robert said, thinking about a more recent moment where he’d sent Adam off to buy them lunch (on him) and had begun indulging Aaron by loosening his jeans and slipping his hand inside when Adam returned early, deciding he couldn’t be bothered waiting for Bob to make sarnies so had picked up some packets from David’s shop. Thankfully they’d heard his feet on the gravel and sprung apart.

“He works here.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Aaron moved to straighten up and widen the distance, but as if he sensed it was coming and wanted to fight against it, Robert took a fistful of Aaron’s clothes and pulled him until their mouths met, landing together with a grunt. Aaron’s hunger took on a speed of its own and it was as if his frustration at life and work powered his lust. Robert tried to slow the kiss, reaching out one of his hands to Aaron’s face, but it was ignored and he was left with the frenzied sensation of Aaron’s stubble scuffing against his skin and the slick excitement of Aaron’s tongue seeking his.

The chair creaked under the shifting weight and Aaron’s short breathy grunts landing on Robert’s cheek paused for a moment as his mouth detached and hung over him, lips wet and open, just as his hands began a race between unbuckling his belt and opening his shirt. Robert craned up his face, caught the fullness of Aaron’s bottom lip in his mouth and pulled and then his eyes were loose, rolling back in his head as Aaron’s fingers pressed at him hurriedly through his underwear.

_This is it, Robert Sugden_ – he thought to himself, like he was running his own DVD extras commentary track – _this is the night the fantasy becomes real_. He imagined it, flicking through thoughts like a pornographic flipbook. Aaron would get up to lock the door and undress him – slowly – and Robert would lean into him, kissing his neck, stroking his cock until he was hard, telling him (well, strictly speaking: dropping transparent hints) _You’re so good to me. So good._ And they both knew without another word what that meant. Robert would be up out of the chair and over and desk and Aaron’s tongue...Aaron’s tongue would be –

“Lock the door,” Robert said under heavy breath, unable to wait any longer. He could already feel that wet ripple of flesh licking at the base of his spine as if Aaron was already spoiling him.

Aaron pulled the last of Robert’s buttons open and skimmed the back of his hand up Robert’s torso as a lingering teaser of what awaited, before standing upright and heading to the door. He wasn’t even a foot away from it, when the portacabin door was wrenched open and Lawrence stood on the steps. Robert jolted, staggering to his feet to redress, shirt flapping and belt clanking loudly in the silence. Lawrence lowered his narrowed gaze taking a look between Aaron, who had backed away and pulled his hi-vis jacket down over his open fly.

“I’m here on business, but if it’s an inconvenient time,” Lawrence said with the sharpness of a knife.

“I’ll-” Aaron said, stumbling out of the cabin and not daring to look Robert or Lawrence in the eye.

It seemed like Lawrence had the same problem and Robert pushed aside the brief shame for a different tact, once the door was shut.

“What’s the matter, Lawrence? Afraid you’re missing out?” He smirked to himself, lacing up his belt and buttoning up his shirt. He nodded towards the seat the other side of the desk. “Be my guest.”

Lawrence kept his face fixed, head lowered. Robert kept the top three buttons of his shirt undone, amused by the way Lawrence looked like he wanted to escape his own skin. He couldn’t help himself and leant on the desk, itching to press on the wound.

“What can I do for you? And not _that_ ,” he said nodding his head to the door Aaron had just left from. He laughed, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “Although by my reckoning you wouldn’t even know _how_ anymore.”

Lawrence’s jaw clenched. “Enough of your sordid little comments!” The angered movement of his arm sent sheets of paper careering to the floor.

“Sordid?” Robert said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s sex, Lawrence. Intimate, passionate, physical, fun. Sex. You should try it sometime. I mean, it can be sordid if you’re into that sort of thing and I’m not exactly opposed but-”

“I don’t have to listen to this from you, anymore.” He’d been threatening Robert with ending the contract as soon as he discovered Charity had handed over the business.

“Oh but you do,” Robert said, rising to his feet. “I think you’re forgetting who brought you in a nice tidy sum last month, who’s going to increase it next month and the month after that. Because that’s what I do. You think Jimmy and Nicola are going to bring in the business that I can? In your dreams.”

“Well they’ll get a damn sight more work done than you, using this place as your little…den.” Lawrence gestured to the desk, still stood with a hard glaze to his eyes.

“It really does make you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” Robert sat again, smug in his own power, and rested his arms on the chair.  

“It makes me _uncomfortable_ having to deal with vile snakes like you.”

“Snakes. Careful. That was almost Freudian.”

“Haven’t you had enough out of me and my family? When will you just leave us alone?!”

Robert didn’t even blink under Lawrence’s raised voice. “When you admit you need me. When you admit to everyone what you really are, what I’ve said all along. A frightened old closet case trapped in a soulless marriage.” He enjoyed it, of course he did. Watching someone as smug and as rich – and deluded – as Lawrence squirm like a worm on a hook was enthralling.

Lawrence scoffed. “Please. You’re one to talk!” His posture changed and then he was smirking, laughing, hands plunged into his coat pockets. “At least my fears about who I was stemmed from the times, the law. What’s your excuse? Pride? Daddy wouldn’t love me?” Lawrence adopted a babyish voice which sent Robert rocketing to his feet and his fist slammed on the top of the desk.

“You know nothing about me!” He saw his anger in a flash of spit in front of him.

“Touched a nerve?”

Robert’s knuckles were bled of colour, driven into the desk and breath steamed in his nostrils. He wondered, for a second longer than he should, about how hard he’d have to throw that desk at Lawrence to trigger another heart attack.

“You see, Robert. We’re more alike than you want to admit.”

“I’m nothing, _nothing_ , like you.”

“Aren’t you?” Lawrence said, looking him straight in the eye. “Denial. Refusal to admit to your feelings. Scared. A marriage of convenience – aren’t they all things you accuse me of?”

“Difference is - you’re still living it.”

“And that makes you the better man, does it?”

“I’m the man you wish you could’ve been.” There was no modesty in his words, he stood, chin angled upwards. He’d run Lawrence into the ground if it got an admission from him – that Robert was more powerful, that he was more successful.

“Outed to everyone in the village, every precious secret exposed and laughed at. Shacked up with your little boyfriend?”

“Jealous?” Robert said, raising his eyebrows. “That I get to wake up with Aaron, that I get to sit beside him in public and touch him? Without everyone whispering and the police coming to drag me away? It’s not shameful anymore, Lawrence, you know - what I do with him every night. The things you can only imagine. And you – you went to prison for Harold. For what? Years and years of nothing. No one.” He tilted his head to the side. “It’s sad, really. Tragic. Well, it would be if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

Robert moved around the side of the desk and perched on the edge so that he was close enough to see the worn defeat in Lawrence’s eyes.

“It must be difficult,” - Robert said, continuing his speech in a voice that was too light to be mistaken for empathy- “to look at me every day and see what you’ve missed out on. I mean, on the one hand, I’m everything you wish you could be. On the other, how disappointing to find out I _do_ sleep with men. Just not sad, desperate men like you. Did it keep you up at night when you found out? Did you imagine it?” He grinned, gripping his arms around his body and nodding as if he was answering the questions he’d set.

Lawrence sat there and let silence push between them. Robert saw this as a victory and returned to his seat. He still had a smirk as he opened up the laptop screen and waited for Lawrence to leave.

“I felt sorry for you,” Lawrence said, his slow, deep words rising up through the thick silence. “Not at first. I had my daughter to think about. But eventually. Although, maybe it was more like pity.”

Robert felt the lower half of his face still and any satisfaction dry like cement had been poured over it. When he had first begun working for Lawrence, before Chrissie and he’d begun point scoring, he fed on Lawrence’s knowledge and passion for business. It was the life – the wealth, the respect, the status – he’d always wanted. And Lawrence had been a mentor. There was a time, a dim and distant time, when he’d respected him and enjoyed learning from him. Robert had made the business into _something_ , but the thrill of success was one they both appreciated and shared in.

“It’s the twenty-first century and you were a thirty-year-old man running scared. You have men on the television kissing, Pride. Popstars, actors. And you? You wanted to run from it. Bury it. Kill it. And why? Because you wanted to be _a real man_.” Lawrence laughed and its emptiness rattled around the cabin. He clenched his fist. “Because you thought it would make you weak? Because the man you looked up to more than anyone in the whole world – a dead man – might’ve loved you even less than he already did? That every bad thing you’d ever done to let him down would pale in comparison to the disappointment he’d feel if you fell in love with a man? Jack Sugden is cold in the ground and you’d still ruin your own life if it meant he might love you more.” Lawrence stood up. “You were a fool and a coward. Of course I felt sorry for you.”

All Robert’s words were knotted and he swallowed – and then again. He looked away from Lawrence and heard the word “Don’t” appear and then dissolve. He thought of his father, first in blurred vague, memories that could have been anyone’s. The photos his sister kept coming to life. The checked shirts, the flat cap. The smile that didn’t really look like his, the eyes that did. And then the bigger memories came back to him, the clearer ones like little slices of film. He thought of Jack dragging his weary feet in from the field and running a hand over Robert’s hair as he passed.

“It’ll all be yours one day,” he’d said and Robert had smiled at him, bright and big and beaming. He liked making his dad smile and talking about the future on the farm did that. They dreamed about it together. Robert’s family. Robert’s son. Robert’s son’s son. The cows and the acres and the machinery. The mud and milk and markets.

But he hadn’t wanted the farm and he knew that. And the feeling of not wanting it grew and grew until it was a fear, until it had made him sick to be bound to it. His chest would rise with anxiety if he thought about it. He split in two. Jack’s Robert fantasised about the farm, about staying put about growing old. They made that Robert real as they talked about him more and more. Jack’s Robert made his dad happy, proud. But His Robert became a private fantasy, a secret. His Robert would see the world and earn millions. His Robert was too big for this life, this village. His Robert became everything his father hated. Greed and corporations and computers. Ambition. His Robert became the enemy of Jack’s Robert. And he would slip sometimes and His Robert would slide out between his skin until his dad could see right through him. Then the real fear set in.

And then there was another memory. This, another more specific than others. More vivid. Something on the TV or on the news and his dad’s voice over the top, between mouthfuls of beer and the sound of Ned Glover opening another can. Robert was in the kitchen making himself a drink, half listening.

“It’s not my place to say it-” Jack said.

“-But you’re going to say it anyway.”

“I’ve got no issue with it. Whatever people do in their own homes is not my concern.”

“But…”

“No. No. That’s all.” That wasn’t all, it was heard in Jack’s voice.

“But if your Robert or Andy were that way…”

Robert’s head had whipped round, hearing his name said. Milk had left a cold mark printed above his lip, he could feel it. He heard his dad laugh dismissively at Ned’s comment.

“Give over,” Jack said. “It won’t be my boys.”

And then Robert was spotted, mouth attached to a glass of milk and in his pyjamas.

“Oi you, back to bed,” Jack said.

“If me and Andy were what?” Robert asked and saw Ned smirk behind his beer. A woman on the TV said the word _homosexual_ and Jack changed the channel, shooing him back upstairs.

Back in the portacabin, Lawrence was stood near the door and Robert, head still in the past, met his eyes like a darting moth. Lawrence glanced him up and down. “For all the talk and the show…shame doesn’t just leave you. It’s part of you and it always will be.” Lawrence touched his fingertips to his skull.

“I’m not ashamed.” He could hardly raise his voice loud enough.

“To love him? Perhaps not.” Lawrence looked away. “The way you feel about him overrides that. For now. While you still have him.” Lawrence placed his hand on the door and pulled it open. “You’re not ashamed of him. You’re ashamed of you.”

Robert didn’t hear him leave. The door closed and cold air swirled through the portacabin, ruffling the folder of paperwork Lawrence had left on the desk.

Victoria said he would have understood, Diane said he’d have wanted him to be happy. Andy said nothing. Robert had passed his grave a few months ago and couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. Instead, two words that he still didn’t say. Only in his head.

_Sorry, Dad_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     


End file.
